Our internet service went down yesterday afternoon and was gone for the whole evening. It was discouraging how dependent I am on it these days. I was reduced to pulling out my Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (10th edition) to look up Carl Roger’s usage of the word, “molar,” in the sentence: “… enunciating the laws which appear to govern alteration in human behavior, whether in the situations we classify as perceptions, those we classify as learning, or the more global or molar changes which occur in therapy, involving both perception and learning.”
The Websters had no definition that helped. However, my good old American Heritage Dictionary did.
Molar: “Physics, of or pertaining to a body of matter as a whole, perceived apart from molecular or atomic properties.”
So sort of “global” but in a more scientific, physical way.
This made good sense since in this chapter, Rogers was attempting to reconcile his client based therapy with good science.
I am finding Rogers very helpful. I like his strong belief in the basic goodness of humans. I like that he manages to condone a redemptive understanding of life without descending into religion.
In Chapter 9 in the book he attempts to describe a functioning person in terms of the “good life.” pdf of chapter online
I understand myself as living the “good life” but not in terms of high functioning necessarily, just being lucky as I have said in this space many times.
Roger calls on some of my favorite religious thinkers: Kierkegaard and Martin Buber. Reading this book confirms my own point of view in many ways. I hope I can learn from it as well.
Carl Rogers | Simply Psychology
This is a good link for some explicating of Rogers.
‘We Completely Misunderstand the Most Important Thing That Ever Happened in the Country’ | FAIR
This is an interview with James Loewen, author of Lies my Teacher Told Me, from back in November. It’s a good read right now with all the misconceptions floating around about the Confederacy and why we fought the Civil War (slavery).
Charlottesville And The Rise Of White Identity Politics | FiveThirtyEight
I rely on FiveThirtyEight for sane responses.
Amateur Sleuths Aim to Identify Charlottesville Marchers, but Sometimes Misfire – The New York Times
When Facebookers began passing around pictures of the Nazis, I had misgivings of this latest manifestation of what they are calling “doxxing.”
Sure enough they fucked up and some guy and his family are in hiding from crazies.
The word, “doxxing,” seems to come from “docs,” or “documenting,” as in “documenting people whom you feel need to be exposed.
We used to call it outing.
It reminds me of the anti-abortion people publishing information about doctors (one at least of whom ended up dead by the hands of sniper).